


Talking to Ducks

by parrishsrubberplant (genus_species)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Awkward Flirting, First Kiss, M/M, Rubber Ducking, Rubber Ducks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 15:14:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15246102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genus_species/pseuds/parrishsrubberplant
Summary: 5 times Dex (and Nursey!) talk to rubber ducks + 1 time they...don't.





	Talking to Ducks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Measureless](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measureless/gifts), [asimpleline18](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asimpleline18/gifts).



**An Ordinary Duck**

Nursey sees it when they’re unpacking their room. 

“Do you mind that there’s only one desk?” Dex asks. “We can probably fit another one in here if you want.” He takes a yellow rubber duck out of his backpack sets it in the middle of the desk.

“Nah,” Nursey says. “It’s fine.” Dex puts a mug full of pencils precisely into the right corner of the desk and turns it so the handle is exactly square to the edge.

Nursey takes out his pencil pouch (“When in doubt, go to the library,” it reads, gold letters on a black background.) He leans around Dex to set it on the left edge of the desk.

“Do you use your desk surface as a flat filing cabinet?” Dex asks.

“Bro,” Nursey says in horror. “You saw my room last year.” Nursey prefers to keep his desk bare at all times. Even pencils have to earn their place. If he’s honest, the rubber duck makes it feel overly decorated.

“We can get another desk,” Dex says again. “It’s okay. I think Farms said there was one on offer from the volleyball house.”

“I really don’t mind,” Nursey says. “I do half my work in the library anyway. We can share.”

“If you’re sure,” Dex says.

Nursey thinks about Dex, kneeling in the middle of the room and staring at the coin wedged between the floorboards for hours. “Do you keep asking me if I mind because you mind?” 

Dex looks away. “No,” he says.

“You totally do,” Nursey says.

“I don’t--it’s not that,” Dex says sharply. “I’m just--I know I was, like, a massive dick about this. Super huge cock. Um. I’m trying to make sure you feel comfortable.”

Nursey does not know how to respond to this. Dex saying ‘super huge cock’ is going to be echoing around inside his mind for a long while. “What’s with the duck?” he blurts out.

“It’s a CS thing,” Dex says. “You explain your project, you know, your code or whatever, to a rubber duck. And then sometimes, if you’re me you throw the duck at the wall because you can’t believe you’re this stupid.”  
Nursey picks up the rubber duck and examines it. Now that he’s looking closely, the paint is a little bit worn off around the beak, as though it has crashed multiple times into the wall. “I’ve never heard of that.”

Dex shrugs. “It’s pretty common. I mean, some people like to get another pair of shoes, but I like explaining it to the duck better. Real people judge you and remember. Rubber ducks judge you just as much but they forget.”

Nursey looks at the duck thoughtfully. “I should try that.” 

**Hockey Duck**

At first, weird rubber ducks aren’t really a conscious obsession. Dex has a rubber duck on the desk. Nursey walks into the room to see Dex talking to the rubber duck sometimes. It’s chill.

Then they’re on a roadie, stopping at a service plaza because the bus bathroom isn’t working. He sees the rubber duck with with its bucket and black-taped hockey stick. He thinks, _I wonder if Dex would like it._ He thinks of Dex, sitting at their desk and muttering into the laptop. _I wonder if Dex would even notice if his duck changed._

Then he’s laughing to himself and handing over his credit card. He walks out of the shop with the hockey duck in a brown paper bag.

He makes the switch a couple of days later, while Dex is at the computer lab. “Hey buddy,” he says to the ordinary duck. “How do you feel about seeing the world a bit?” 

The duck does not answer, but Nursey makes it nod. He puts the duck in his hockey bag. 

Nursey beats Bitty to Faber the next morning unintentionally. He wakes up too early, a drumbeat of poetry buzzing through his mind. He writes few a lines, realizes he needs coffee, and gets up. He pulls on sweatpants, shoves his feet into boots, and grabs his bag.

He gets coffee. Annie’s is full of sleepy students and bright-haired baristas. Nursey smiles at the redhead with the nose ring. He and his coffee walk to the rink. He sits in the stands of Faber and pulls out his notebook. The duck tumbles to the floor as he reaches for a pen. 

The sun is just coming up and shining through the windows. A beam of sunlight sets the duck aglow. The duck looks like it’s floating in a bathtub of fire. The duck looks suddenly golden. The duck looks like magic, like if you explained code to _this_ duck, it would answer you back and be able to fix not only your code but also your life.

Nursey takes out his phone and snaps a picture. He thinks for a moment and texts it to Jack.

He checks his phone again after practice. Haha, nice, Jack wrote.

He really doesn’t mean to start running a “travelling rubber duck/college student-athlete aesthetic Instagram.” It just kind of happens.

He doesn’t mean to kidnap Dex’s duck and leave it perched on the windowsill by his bed. It just kind of happens.

**Dracula Duck**

Nursey swaps the duck out again just after midterms. He’s tired. He spent two days wrestling Publisher into submission. And then some asshole jammed the saddle stapler at the library. At which point Nursey gave up and texted, _Bro, I need you._

Dex replied, _what?_

 _My dream is broken. My hopes are ruined. I can’t finish my chapbook._ Nursey sent a picture of the jammed stapler. 

Dex appeared ten minutes later with a flathead screwdriver and a stiff piece of wire. He unjammed the stapler and then waited, dicking around on his phone or something, while Nursey bound the copies of his book.

After that, Nursey figures they both deserve a new duck. The newcomer has vampire fangs and a long black cloak.

Dex sits down at the desk and flips open his laptop. He types busily for ten minutes. Then, he sits back, rolling his wrists.

“Done?” Nursey asks.

“Mmm,” Dex says. When he gets really into his work he goes almost nonverbal. “No.”

“Do you need me to leave?” Nursey asks. Dex keeps shifting in his chair. He sighs, bites the end of his pen, then taps the pen on the desk. “No, seriously, bro. Do you need me to go so you can talk to your duck?”

Dex seems to notice Dracula Duck for the first time. He picks it up and holds it in the palm of his hand. “What do you call a duck with fangs?”

“A fuck?” Nursey asks without thinking.

Dex doubles over laughing. When he can speak again, he says, “Count Quackula!”

Nursey laughs too. “Okay, well, do you and Count the Fuck von Quackula need a moment? ‘Cause I can go downstairs and get a beer and play some Mario Kart and shit, just say the word. I need a break too.” You’re babbling, he tells himself. Shut up.

“Count the Fuck von Quackula,” Dex repeats, and loses it again. “Yeah, I’m going to talk to the duck. Do what you need to do.”

Nursey leaves.

**Statue of Liberty Duck**

Nursey goes to New York for the first weekend of Spring Break. His mom basically guilt-trips him into it.

“Baby, I haven’t seen you in so long,” she says, in the middle of Nursey complaining (yet again) about the cafeteria food. “Come home and we’ll make you some real food.”

“Food with actual flavor,” Nursey says, wistfully. “Seasoning. People who aren’t afraid to cook with spices.”

His mom laughs at him. “Buy your ticket,” she tells him, and Nursey does.

He isn’t thinking about Dex. He’s enjoying seeing his family and eating real food and sleeping in a bed that isn’t a bunk. He’s working on a new poem in his room, reading bits of it out loud, when he realizes: he misses the ducks. He’s gotten used to reading new work to the line of rubber ducks on the windowsill. He’s gotten used to Dex muttering to the current duck on his desk.

Maybe he does miss him. 

Nursey doesn’t usually go into dumpy tourist shops. In fact, he avoids them like the plague, just like he stays away from midtown, and the Empire State building, and the High Line in the middle of the summer. His quest to find a New York City duck for Dex isn’t so much a quest as it is a vague hope that he’ll stumble across the perfect thing.

Nursey’s wandering around Williamsburg, waiting until it’s actually reasonable to show up to the bar. It’s nonsensical to show up earlier than ten minutes after the designated meeting time; it’s not like he wants to look like he wants to see these people or anything. Half of them are truly terribly Andover bros anyway. He’s not sure why he needs to meet up with them. To prove that his life is better now, maybe.

He wanders into a bodega to kill the time, and there it is: the perfect New York duck. He buys it without even thinking about it. He puts it on the table beside his beer and doesn’t bother explaining himself to his bemused high school friends.

**Pirate Duck**

They’re playing Seton Hall when Nursey breaks out the pirate duck. He cheated and ordered this one on Amazon. It has been sitting in his bag, waiting for its moment.

Seton Hall’s second line center must follow him on Instagram or something. During a delay while his left wing gets a new stick (and who breaks a stick during a college game anyway, what the Hell, this isn’t the NHL), he smiles at Nursey. “Hey, bro.”

“Hey,” Nursey says. The guy has two inches and ten pounds on him, easy. 

The center leans in closer. “I think I recognize you,” he says. “From, uh. Insta?”

“Yeah?” Nursey smiles. He’s never going to be Jack-level at taking pictures but the recognition is nice. And Dex is starting to scowl which is hilarious.

The center gains confidence and smiles more widely. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re the guy with the duck!”

 _Not_ the Insta Nursey thought he was talking about. “Uh, yeah,” he says, trying to recover smoothly. What the fuck.

The opposing player glides back onto the ice, stick in hand, and play resumes.

“Did you get his number?” Chowder asks when they’re changing out and getting ready to shower.

“Whose number?” Nursey asks. He presses down on a new bruise that’s rising at the top of his thigh and hisses between his teeth. He doesn’t even know where this one came from.

“#43,” Chowder says. “He seemed really into you.”

Dex turns away, shimmying out of his compression shorts and wrapping a towel around his waist. Nursey is continually astonished by how pale his ass is. “Nah,” Nursey says. “He’s not into me. He’s just a fan of my Insta. You know.” 

Dex makes an interrogative noise.

“Pucktheduck dot Instagram dot com,” Chowder sings out.

“Thanks bro,” Dex says. “Knew I could count on you.” He walks away to the showers.

Nursey looks at Chowder with utter betrayal.

On the bus, Dex slumps over, looking at his computer. “God,” he mutters. “Fuck.” Nursey can’t see what’s wrong, but something is. Dex keeps hitting return and his code keeps telling him it’s broken.

Now seems like as good a time as any. Nursey sticks his hand in the top pocket of his backpack. “Here,” he says, and pulls out the pirate duck.

Dex looks vaguely scandalized. “I’m not doing that on the bus,” he says. But he takes the duck anyway. By the time they’re back at the hotel, he has found and fixed his mistake.

**Valentine’s Duck**

After just over six months of living with a CS major, Nursey thinks they might be rubbing off on one another.

The fuzzy blanket he stole from Dex is wrapped around his shoulders (Dex runs hot, Nursey runs cold--the blanket is on more or less permanent loan). His favorite purple pen is in his hand. He has revised the same stanza five times in a row and it still isn’t right. “His eyes are as green as a fresh-pickled toad,” he mutters.

Oh, what the hell. He climbs down off the bunk and picks the rubber duck off the desk. “Hi buddy,” he tells it.

The duck doesn’t answer.

“This poem sucks,” Nursey tells it. He tilts his palm, angling the duck. Now it looks like it’s smirking at him. “Come here, bro,” he tells it. He starts to climb back up to his bed. Two steps up the ladder he drops the duck and has to bend down for it. He almost falls off the ladder. “That would have been stupid. Getting a shoulder injury because I was too lazy to climb down for a damn duck.” 

He ascends one-handed, holding the duck in his palm. He settles himself back into his nest. “So, this is called…” he looks down at the poem. “Actually, it doesn’t have a title. I can’t think of anything that’s quite right for it. Okay, this feels weird. I’m talking to a duck.”

The duck still doesn’t answer.

He reads the poem to the duck. He stops halfway through a line to change a word. That word change inspires him to write a new line, and then the middle of the poem is flowing better. The end still feels too abrupt.

He sets the duck on his pillow. He reads the poem again, really performing it this time.

It still sucks.

He flops over face first into his pillow and groans.

“Are you okay?”

Nursey flails upright with a start. “Bwaah?” He looks down over the edge of the bunk. From this angle he has an excellent view of the pinkening tips of Dex’s ears.

“Sorry,” Dex says. “I thought you knew I was here. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

“It’s okay, this wasn’t a poem about you,” Nursey says. There are many times when his mouth moves a lot faster than his brain. There are only a few times when he genuinely regrets this. This is one of those times.

“You write poems about me?”

“Don’t take it personally, I write poems about everything,” Nursey says.

Dex puts his backpack down on the floor by the desk with a thump. “Okay, I won’t,” he says. He takes out his laptop and flips it open. He turns around in his chair. “Where’s the duck?”

“Oh, sorry,” Nursey says. He leans over the edge of the bunk, holding out the duck. “You can have him back. I was just--”

Dex begins to laugh delightedly. “Oh my god. You were reading your poetry to the duck!”

“Like you don’t explain your code to the duck all the time,” Nursey says.

Dex gets up and reaches up to take the duck. “Hi, little buddy,” he says. “Are you getting lots of culture? Is your other dad taking care of your liberal arts education?”

“Fuck you,” Nursey says without any heat.

“I’m very cultured,” Dex says. He’s clearly trying to put on a snooty accent. “I’ve learned a lot about simile, and metaphor, and...and--”

“Struggling there, Poindexter?”

“...zeugma,” Dex says triumphantly, and carries the duck gently back to his desk. He digs in his backpack, then turns around. “I’m sorry. I did you need the duck?”

Nursey scratches out three words and writes four more. “Nah, you can have them.”

Dex still looks embarrassed. “Um,” he says. His red, freckled face appears over the edge of the ladder. The rungs creak under his weight.

“Come up, Poindexter,” Nursey says, and draws his feet in to make room for Dex.

Dex folds himself into the space at the foot of Nursey’s bed. He’s holding his right hand against his chest like he’s trying to hide something. “Um,” Dex says again.

Nursey caps his pen and sticks it in his notebook like a bookmark.

“Here,” Dex says, and thrusts his hand in Nursey’s face. “Happy birthday. Happy Valentine’s Day. Whatever.”

Nursey leans forward. He cups Dex’s hand in both of his. “You got me a duck.”

Dex isn’t pulling his hand away. “I saw it and I thought of you.” The duck is pink and covered with little red hearts. Dex’s eyes are very green and his freckles stand out against his flushed cheeks. 

“Wow,” Nursey says. He means all of it: the duck, Dex’s face, and everything. Dex rears back. “Chill, bro. Good wow.” He lifts the duck out of Dex’s palm.

Dex takes his hand back and picks at a hangnail. “Glad you like it.”

“Yeah,” Nursey says.

Dex leans forward and kisses him, hasty and off-center. It’s so quick Nursey has a split second where he doesn’t believe it happened--but the corner of his mouth is warm.

“What was that for?” he asks. The vinyl of the duck gives as he curls his fingers around it.

“Sorry,” Dex says. “Sorry--I--”

Nursey starts to smile. “Come here,” he says. He puts his notebook and the duck between his leg and the wall. He moves so he’s kneeling. His hair brushes the ceiling.

“What?” 

“Come here,” Nursey says, and Dex doesn’t need another invitation. He sits up on his knees too, and promptly thumps his head against the ceiling.

“Oww!” Nursey reaches out and puts his hand on the top of Dex’s head. “Jesus,” Dex mutters, “I am messing this all up--”

Nursey cuts him off by kissing him. “You’re not,” he says, when they break apart. “You’re really, really not.”

“Okay,” Dex says. When they kiss again, Nursey feels it in his lips and in the pit of his stomach. He feels it in his goddamn toes. He curls his hand around the back of Dex’s neck.

Dex sits back. “So, ducks,” he says. “Ducks are what do it for you, huh?”

Nursey swats at him with his notebook. “I could say the same for you.”

“It’s not just the ducks,” Dex says. “It was...you’re sweet, you know that?” Nursey must make some kind of face--he has never thought of himself as sweet--because Dex repeats himself. “Sweet. And thoughtful. And every time I’ve needed you this year, you’ve been there, and--”

“Same,” Nursey says. “Seriously, same.”

Chowder thumps the door with his fist. “Guys! Dinner!”

Nursey leans forward and kisses him, one last time. “Let’s go, then,” he says. “We’ll talk more later?” Dex nods. 

They climb down the ladder. Nursey puts the Valentine’s duck on the windowsill with the others and pats it on the head. Dex follows him out the door.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic found its inspiration in a Discord chat many, many moons ago, and it feels like time to say "Fuck it!" and release it into the world.
> 
> I can be found on Tumblr @[parrishsrubberplant](http://parrishsrubberplant.tumblr.com/). Come say hi!


End file.
